Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 eBook

were short and simple; the Unitarian clergyman from
Syracuse made a few remarks, the children from the
orphan asylum, in which he was deeply interested, sang
an appropriate hymn, and around the grave stood representatives
of the Biddles, the Dixwells, the Sedgwicks, the Barclays,
and Stantons, and three generations of his immediate
family. With a few appropriate words from General
John Cochrane we left our beloved kinsman alone in
his last resting place. Two months later, on
his birthday, his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, passed
away and was laid by his side. Theirs was a remarkably
happy union of over half a century, and they were soon
reunited in the life eternal.

CHAPTER V.

OUR WEDDING JOURNEY.

My engagement was a season of doubt and conflict—­doubt
as to the wisdom of changing a girlhood of freedom
and enjoyment for I knew not what, and conflict because
the step I proposed was in opposition to the wishes
of all my family. Whereas, heretofore, friends
were continually suggesting suitable matches for me
and painting the marriage relation in the most dazzling
colors, now that state was represented as beset with
dangers and disappointments, and men, of all God’s
creatures as the most depraved and unreliable.
Hard pressed, I broke my engagement, after months
of anxiety and bewilderment; suddenly I decided to
renew it, as Mr. Stanton was going to Europe as a
delegate to the World’s Anti-slavery Convention,
and we did not wish the ocean to roll between us.

Thursday, May 10, 1840, I determined to take the fateful
step, without the slightest preparation for a wedding
or a voyage; but Mr. Stanton, coming up the North
River, was detained on “Marcy’s Overslaugh,”
a bar in the river where boats were frequently stranded
for hours. This delay compelled us to be married
on Friday, which is commonly supposed to be a most
unlucky day. But as we lived together, without
more than the usual matrimonial friction, for nearly
a half a century, had seven children, all but one
of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered,
clothed, and fed, enjoying sound minds in sound bodies,
no one need be afraid of going through the marriage
ceremony on Friday for fear of bad luck. The
Scotch clergyman who married us, being somewhat superstitious,
begged us to postpone it until Saturday; but, as we
were to sail early in the coming week, that was impossible.
That point settled, the next difficulty was to persuade
him to leave out the word “obey” in the
marriage ceremony. As I obstinately refused to
obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into
an equal relation, that point, too, was conceded.
A few friends were invited to be present and, in a
simple white evening dress, I was married. But
the good priest avenged himself for the points he
conceded, by keeping us on the rack with a long prayer
and dissertation on the sacred institution for one
mortal hour. The Rev. Hugh Maire was a little